010: Becoming Brilliant – Interview with Prof. Roberta Golinkoff

In just a few years, today’s children and teens will forge careers that look nothing like those that were available to their parents or grandparents. While the U.S. economy becomes ever more information-driven, our system of education seems stuck on the idea that “content is king,” neglecting other skills that 21st century citizens sorely need. Backed by the latest scientific evidence and illustrated with examples of what’s being done right in schools today, Becoming Brilliant (Affiliate link) introduces the “6Cs” collaboration, communication, content, critical thinking, creative innovation, and confidence along with ways parents can nurture their children’s development in each area. Join me for an engaging chat with award-winning Professor Roberta Golinkoff about the key takeaways from the new book.   Jump to highlights 00:35 Introducing the guest 02:11 Reason for writing the book Becoming Brilliant 03:49 Mission statement of the book 05:32 6 Competencies in the book 16:19 Teachable places are everywhere 24:42 Talk to your children 25:48 How do you have a conversation around the book 28:05 Books are important for children 29:08 How can we encourage our children to develop grit 33:42 2 Ways to view intelligence significant   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen: 00:33 Hello and welcome to the Your Parenting Mojo podcast. Today’s episode is called Becoming Brilliant. I’m so excited to welcome my guest today, Roberta Golinkoff. I reached out to her because I’d read her book, Einstein never used flashcards, which advocated for a young children’s learning through play rather than through expensive toys or high pressure classes. So when her new book Becoming Brilliant came out, I knew I had to read it and I absolutely dance a jig the day that she agreed to join us here on Your Parenting Mojo. I’m so excited. Thank you so much for joining us. Roberto. Dr. Golinkoff: 01:02 You know, it’s funny, but I danced a jig too! I’m so happy to able to talk about these issues and it’s such a pleasure to meet you, Jen. I hope I get to see you next time I’m out in California. Jen: 01:12 That would be great. All right, well let me formally introduce you. Dr. Golinkoff is the Unidel H. Rodney Sharp Professor of Education, Psychology, and Linguistics at the University of Delaware. She has won a fellowship and many prizes for her work and she served as an Associate Editor of Child Development, which really is the premier journal in her field and she’s also authored over 150 journal Publications, book chapters, and 14 books and monographs. Her official bio says that she has appeared on numerous radio and television shows and in print media and never turns down an opportunity to spread the findings of psychological science to the lay public so I can vouch for her on that front at least. Thank you again for joining us. Dr. Golinkoff: 01:49 When do I sleep? Jen: 01:51 I don’t know. I wondered that too. Dr. Golinkoff: 01:54 Some days I wonder that. Jen: 01:56 Yeah, I can imagine. So I wonder if you could start a bit by telling us about the premise of Becoming Brilliant. Why did you write this book? Dr. Golinkoff: 02:04 So we know that many parents are struggling and trying to figure out what their children should be receiving by way of schooling and by way of parenting in the home. And the reason they’re struggling is because we are in a new era. You know, there has never been a time like this technology is advancing so rapidly. It’s really changing all our lives. Many of the parents who you speak to know that places like National Economic Forum have said that 47 percent of our jobs are going to go the way of computers and robots. The statistics of very clear that many, many jobs will be vanishing. So how do we protect our children for the future? So when we started to think about this, we knew it was going to be about education, but we didn’t just want it to be about reimagining education in the classroom because we recognize that kids spend only 20 percent of their time in school. Jen: 03:05 It seems like way more than that. Dr. Golinkoff: 03:08 But it’s not if you actually do the numbers on it, and that means that the kinds of activities that children engage in outside of school and at home and be crucially important for their education. Many people are not thrilled with the kind of education that their children have. And we also wanted to broaden what we think of as education because if your kid is just smart but a junky person, what good did you do? Right? You want to create kids who will be happy in their personal lives and who will take the perspective of others. Otherwise, you know, how can you have partners? How can you work in the workforce if you can’t get along with people? So our book actually has a mission statement and we created this mission statement by modifying a mission statement from Ontario, our neighbors to the north. I love Canada. Dr. Golinkoff: 04:02 I want to be a poster child because they get education. They know how important playful learning is and they minimize the drill-and-kill. So our mission statement is society thrives when we craft environments both in and out of school that support happy, healthy thinking, caring and social children who become collaborative, creative, competent, and responsible citizens tomorrow. Jen: 04:35 That’s quite a mission. Dr. Golinkoff: 04:37 It is a big mission. It is true. And in order to fulfill this mission, it’s just a good thing that Kathy and I are steeped in the psychological literature because between us, we read and incorporated thousands of studies into this book and while that may sound incredibly dense and boring… Jen: 05:00 …it’s actually not because I read it! Dr. Golinkoff: 05:07 …we really try to write in a way that invites people into our thinking, into the laboratory, into the school, into the home so that they can see the principles that we extract from the research visible before your eyes? Jen: 05:23 Yeah. I did notice that it’s really full of stories that really helped to get your points across. So let’s dive into the book a little bit. So the setup of the book is that you described the six Cs, which are Collaboration, Communication, Content, Critical thinking, Creative innovation and Confidence. And each of those competencies has four levels of mastery from basic up to pretty high; the kind of level that some people never achieve in their lifetime. And so you actually have it set out on a table format. And as I looked at the table, the building of the levels made immediate sense to me, but it wasn’t until I got to the end of the book that I realized how you can kind of move across the table as well and the competencies themselves build on each other and reinforce each other. Can you talk a little bit about that? Dr. Golinkoff: 06:08 Oh yeah. That was a brilliant presentation of how this is presented. So the idea is that skills that we talk about emerge in development and we tried to put them in sequence by development. And in addition there is development along each of the six Cs. So probably the way to make it clearer would be to give an example, let’s say from collaboration, the first one. Think about the fact that humans are born ultra social. We we will smile to faces and lock onto eyes at birth and this is often a startling recognition that people have. When the new born baby comes out and looks you in the eyes, it’s like, oh my God, there’s a little person in there. So collaboration is basically two heads are better than one. Easy to remember, and in order to collaborate and work with others, so this is our first C. We have to learn to control our emotions and take others’ points of view. We also sprinkle the book with business examples because Peter Drucker, who was the father of modern management, has written about how companies today have to live in a Lego world where the bricks can be combined and recombined as collaborations occur inside and outside the company. Jen: 07:47 Yeah. Yours is the first book I’ve ever seen that does that, that kind of looks ahead to what, what comes out the other end. I’m particularly from a business viewpoint and says these are the kinds of skills that you’re going to need. You know, you’re not going to need to be able to recite the capitals of the 50 states in your career. You’re going to need a whole different set of skills that is not being addressed by schools today. Dr. Golinkoff: 08:07 You know, you, you really get it. I feel like you should be giving this interview! You so get it! So it is absolutely true that what we did in the 20th century, in the 19th century, and unfortunately even in some of this century, is engaged children in a lot of memorization. Now, look, I’m not going to say memorization isn’t important. I’m giving a test tomorrow in one of my classes and not going to have open book, they’re going to have to memorize stuff. Okay? But unless you can make it your own, unless you can engage in deep learning so you can generate examples and you can talk about why this concept is important. You’ve only learned in a very shallow way. And with being able to get at...